‘Daylight is for Suckers: Poem Noir ’ Shell Find

I am Voice Over and all I can tell you for sure is this: daylight is for suckers, for nameless girls by the pool, the body flying off the roof waking up with amnesia; nighttime’s for the moonlight seduction, the silhouette skulking in the bushes, the flash and shot in the dark, headlights in the rearview mirror; everything else: it's all interiors and mirrors shuffling and reinventing themselves with lighting and angles and lamp shades as co-conspirators, deflecting surfaces, covering up deceptions, betrayals, identities, blackmail, murders; while I, Voice Over, trail the thread through the labyrinth city past abductions, beatings, chases, police and crooks in relentless pursuit, and femme fatales switching allegiances from frame to frame to frame-up, veils unveiling and dresses lifting for whoever comes first and/or last;

I, Voice Over, who still can’t remember the combination to the safe behind the picture in the office of the nightclub casino that holds the secret of who I really was or am, and who everyone else is or why they are all pursuing me; and each time knocked or drugged unconscious, the echo-chambered nightmares haunt

Joe Pacheco

Poetic License

and tantalize with surrealistic clues while captors pretending to get careless let me escape so that they can follow me to wherever it is

I, Voice Over, cannot remember, except that suddenly, in the eighty-ninth reeling minute everyone is in the office of the nightclub, whipping out guns or grabbing them from each other as they change sides and shoot each other dead between the confessions and revelations, while police sirens wail one careful minute away on the soundtrack night and the city dissolve outside the window and I, Voice Over, the only one left standing move toward the now open safe, remove, then burn in the fireplace the papers that would have told you and me who I really am or was and what everything was all about;

I guess, looking back, you can say I never really wanted to know, I, Voice Over, who warned you in the beginning: daylight is for suckers

Junonia found on Captiva

Kay Egert, of Bellaire, Michigan, found a junonia on May 1 on the beach across from the 'Tween Waters Island Resort & Spa on Captiva David Egert reported that they had been shelling for about a half-hour when his wife was sorting through some seaweeds and discovered it The couple have been coming to the islands since 2011 and it was their first visit back since Hurricane Ian He noted that it was Egert's first junonia find “She just loves to go shelling and this find was a dream come true,” he added “We were there celebrating our 40th anniversary Made our trip all the more memorable!” To report a shell find, contact 239472-1587 or trepecki@breezenewspapers com